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Abstract In today's digital world, personal privacy has become the number one issue for consumers [9]. Consumers' confidence in personal privacy is directly affecting and limiting the growth of the Internet commercial development. Therefore, it has become a necessity to address the consumers privacy concerns for the interests of the parties involved.

For Google, the project is a pre-emptive move to get a foothold in the living room as more consumers start exploring ways to bring web content to their TV sets.

What are consumers really agreeing to when they purchase something online and have to agree to pages and pages of small print? How do we control the power of the retailer and educate consumers, so they are not suckered into agreements that negatively effect them? Can this retailer really own souls? Will their be legal action as a result of these agreements?

The Dutch consumers'association is trying to take some responsibility for privacy online away from the consumer and shift it to the owners of social networking websites. The association believes it is too difficult and time consuming for consumers to set the privacy settings themselves.

The Acadamey of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are suing domain registration giant (under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act) 'godaddy' disputing over 100 domain names they have 'parked' such as 2011oscars.com, academyawardz.com and oscarsunplugged.com. The lawsuit is 134 pages long and worth up to $10 million dollars in damages. GoDaddy run 'cashparking' offering customers the chance to earn cash when they buy a domain and park the page collecting funds when godaddy's advertising partners receive revenue based on a cost per click model.

Engaging in social media backfires for Nestle. Due to the Greenpeace protest against the company with regards to how the company uses palm oil in its products, a number of people posted their distaste on Nestle's Facebook page. Unfortunately for the company, the representative in charge of replying to comments was far from being amiable, or even courteous. Sample exchange of comments: Nestle: "You have freedom of speech and expression. Here, there are some rules we set. As in almost any other forum. It's to keep things clear." Paul Griffin: "Your page, your rules, true, and you just lost a customer, won the battle and lost the war! Happy?" Nestle: "Oh please...it's like we're censoring everything to allow positive comments." Social media has significant benefits for companies and how they market the products to consumers. However, if used wrongly, as with this case, massive PR clean-up is inevitable.

I found this article and its links really interesting - it discusses the fusion of the city and technology, and uses the concept of ubiquitous technology/urban informatics to explain and describe 'smart cities'. Also, it raises the idea of the 'searchable city' and that cities need to be considered on earily they are searchable. This raises the issue of reputation - which is referred to here: not only consumable items being reviewed by the citizenry and available on iphone apps, but also traffic routes, places to live etc.

The University of California published a report about Internet privacy. 1.000 Americans were interviewed last summer. The result: 55% are more concerned about privacy issues then they were five years ago - mainly because they know more about the subject now. But still only 14% read privacy policies on websites. Besides that younger Internet users belief that their privacy is protected by the law.

More on the new remarketing offer from Google. This is a good effective way to market to consumers, however companies do still need to be mindful of their audience, especially if Google are now on board, and this does get the publicity around being creepy. What is currently an effective way to advertise, could turn sour.

One of the Acts under which the exact laws are outlined in regards to telecommunications providers and their responsibility towards the consumer and state. Dry and very 'Legal' but useful.

PIR = parallel importation restriction. Basically, every country around the world (except a choice few like Hong Kong and New Zealand who did away with it) is a 'territory' so far as publishing is concerned. If you publish a book in Australia, you can't just ship it over to the US and sell it wholesale to the bookstores over there. No, you have to find a publisher over there who will by the licence to reproduce the book for that market. India looks to be thinking about doing away with that. On the plus side for consumers, they'll have access to the entire Amazon e-book range - Hooray! Publishers won't be so happy, as they will lose out on royalties from selling 'local' e-books (hardcopy books will also be affected, but that's not at issue here). Of course, it doesn't work both ways - India will still have to go through the usual channels to publish overseas. the US protects its own. Australia debated this last year, you may remember. Woolworths and Coles were all for PIR abolition, but not really anyone else was ...

As yet it is unspecified, but the Conservative government is to table a bill on copyright that will strike a balance between consumer rights and artist rights. They don't want to stop people who may breach copyright in their day to day life, they just want to go after the baddies who destroy artists royalties. I predict anger from all sides - too weak, too strong ...

Amendments made to the digital economy bill last week, handing courts the power to force internet service providers (ISPs) to block certain websites, threaten freedom of speech and will lead to British websites being blocked without due judicial process, the chief executives of leading technology companies said in an open letter to the Financial Times. The heads of the four largest UK internet service providers as well as Google, Facebook, eBay and Yahoo have all co-signed the letter, along with consumer groups and academics, objecting to amendment. Theoretically the amendment could lead to sites such as YouTube being blocked in the UK.

Ilse Aigner, Germany's minister of food, agriculture and consumer protection, who usually concentrates on issues over rotten meat, genetically engineered corn and imitation cheese, recently took on a different kind of issue: the Internet and data privacy. Suddenly Aigner finds herself facing online giants Amazon, Facebook and, above all, Google. Soon Google plans to send cars equipped with cameras out onto Germany's roads once again for the company's Street View project. Aigner is now insisting that Google should ask permission before violating the privacy of German citizens. The minister's attack and the following discussions reveal just how divided the German government is when it comes to the online world. The debate revolves around questions of national security and individual self-determination on the Internet. But it also concerns the power of the large giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and MySpace, as well as the question of what these companies are doing with the records of our everyday data, and how they will be able to obtain information from us, influence us or perhaps even control us in the future. It seem like, once again, a German politician is exploiting the popular issue of internet privacy and censorship in a superficial way in the hope of scoring political points.

Microsoft shares the same point of view on the limitations of the Flash product as Apple. Again, reliability, security and performance were identified as impediments of supporting the flawed software. Speaking about the mobile era Steve Jobs of Apple says 'low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards...' are areas where Flash is not currently accommodating. It's most interesting to watch powerful market players create pressure for change in the internet space. Adobe can ill afford to ignore these criticisms yet it's now taking opportunity to discredit the motives of the multinationals: "Apple's moves to block Flash and other technologies are designed to protect a business model that locks developers and consumers into a single, proprietary stack," Adobe spokeswoman Holly Campbell said.

Head programmer of Wolfire games, David, also talking about the methods of measurement for analysing economic losses through piracy that do not truly reflect losses terms of real world consumer spending

He admits that "Flash does have some issues, particularly around reliability, security, and performance. But MS works closely with engineers at Adobe, sharing information about the issues in ongoing technical discussions. Despite these issues, Flash remains an important part of delivering a good consumer experience on today's web."

facebook fixed the bug that allow users to view the instant message from their friend. Privacy issued rised again for Facebook.

The topic of domain names as a commodity isn't new, but the prices auctions are fetching for names is. When $2 million is refused for 'jeans.com' it paints a picture of the cost/benefit ratio of domain investment - where the potential financial benefits are clearly outweighing initial costs. The trend developing is for multinational companies to buy domain names with commonly understood verbs (eg dating.com) or nouns (eg books.com). It strengthens their own branded domain name and targets consumers who are undertaking searches on the net for the thing they want - be it a service or good - as opposed to searching for the company that sells that thing. Does it suggest that searching habits are changing? Is brand awareness and brand loyalty losing power?

Ahhhh location applications....the possibilities, the privacy issues. Why wouldn't everyone want their GPS location displayed as public record? A good explanation of why only 7% of Americans are currently using location aps. The important things for consumers to know would be who could access their data and for what purposes. Not only who and for what purpose but another question for consideration is who would have policing authority over the data.